


The Bitter Victory

by naninanito



Category: Kamen Rider OOO
Genre: Alternate Timeline, M/M, Spoilers, character list will grow, what am I getting myself into with this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 07:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2183874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naninanito/pseuds/naninanito
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ankh's wandering body doesn't waste any time absorbing him the first chance it gets.Will Shingo recover in his absence, or will Ankh gain a human body at a cost he never anticipated?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bitter Victory

**Author's Note:**

> So here's a thing I've been threatening to do for a little bit. We open toward the end of the confrontation with the owl Yummy and things get hecked up real quick. This chapter is short, but the next one (whenever I have it for you) will be much longer. Watch the rating, it'll skyrocket if I do this long enough.

He almost appreciated the way the purple Medals narrowed his focus, funneling the whole world down into short-lived snatches of vivid awareness. And anger, always anger. Brilliant, purposeful anger that trained him on every flicker of light and sound that strayed too close. It simplified things. It made the world small.

A tiny world of rage, destroyed and reborn with every new target. Cazali was his world for an instant, and then Ankh – the Wrong Ankh, the lost child. And the Yummy, the persistent interruption, the weakling that darted between Eiji and his goal, his desire.

Eliminate it, the biting anger commanded. Shatter it.

And he did, efficiently. Fresh hatred, a new hunger for oblivion, flowed in to fill its absence. Cazali fleeing, recognized through the haze of degrading senses by virtue of his nature. The greed and their Medals flashed brightest, pulled him strongest, and he followed their pull now.

A single, tiny world he could affect utterly and destroy at will. Terrible, but satisfying. No, useful. He brought the word down on himself like he brought the axe down in Cazali's wake: viciously, desperately, but fruitlessly. Cazali slipped away and Eiji's mind surged ahead, blinded but focused all the same.

Something stole his focus: A cry, sharp and familiar to the rational mind within the irrational body. A tangle of reds, one vibrant and blood and the other draining, flickering to white. A firefly wink of red thrown like a dart into the crackling gray haze where a noisy heap of static moved to cover and claim it.

“Eiji!”

The word cut through him. His world narrowed again, became the beacon of intermingling red and white. He bounded for it, lost himself.

And found himself again, boneless and breathless, half crumbled on the ground with a pile of warm body in his arms.

A body.

The blinders fell away, the world expanded, and Eiji willed himself into motion. He let adrenaline make him a machine of pulley tendons and lever joints. It wasn't difficult when it was necessary, like pulling a trigger. Do it now, feel it later. He stood, searching with darting eyes for Kitamura, and found him staggering out from behind a tree with his hands balled to his chest. He would have to apologize for all this later. That could wait. Now, he commanded.

“Start the car and call an ambulance to the front gates. Get us there as fast as you can.”

He was already moving. His muscles screamed but he willed them to be the mechanical parts they were and carry him back to the road. Kitamura trailed behind him.

“There's-”

“Start the car. Ambulance. Fast as you can.”

His legs threatened to fail when he reached the road. He tightened his grip on his burden to remind his body of the urgency of the situation.

The burden, the situation, was Shingo Izumi warm but limp and empty in his arms.

.0.0.0.

The perfect focus was gone now, and his mechanical resolve with it. Now, Eiji slumped in one of a dozen hard seats along the hospital corridor wall. He didn't remember what he'd told the paramedics, or how long ago they'd arrived, or just when Hina had come to take his place as sole supervisor and answerer of questions. The world was diffuse and noisy and huge and awful.

“I couldn't remember if you liked coffee or not.”

He looked up – how long had he been staring at the gaps between the tiles? – and accepted the can of juice Kitamura held out to him. He leaned back in his seat and just held it, letting the chill leech into his sweaty hands.

“Thanks,” he said, belatedly. He waited for Kitamura to take the seat beside him and shrugged when he remained standing, shifting, swiveling the pull tab on his can of coffee. “You don't have to stick around, you know. You did what you could.”

“Yeah. No. No, I didn't do what I could. I cleaned up my mess.”

“That doesn't change the fact that you helped get us here when we needed it.” Eiji popped the top on his juice and drained half of it to swallow down the next words that threatened to crawl out of his mouth. It's your fault, sure, but it's my fault, too. And I didn't even drive us here.

Those words wouldn't help anybody, so he kept them to himself.

“Well, there's one other thing,” Kitamura said. He dipped a hand into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew it, balled up, a second later. “He threw this when that thing grabbed him. I guess it's- I mean, you need these, right?”

Eiji held out his flat palm to receive the Medal before he even registered what it was. It fell heavy and blood-warm into his hand, and he closed his fingers around it on pure reflex.

“You need it, right?”

“Yeah.” Eiji pressed his lips into a thin smile and nodded. “Yeah, I need it.”

Kitamura returned the nod, but he didn't bother with the false smile. “And that's all I can do, so- So I'll check up later. All right? I'm so sorry.”

He bowed deep and Eiji made some vague, wordless gesture he hoped communicated his absolution. When he finally rose and left, Eiji crumbled again, backward, into the wall.

“This is enough,” he said to himself. This little red spark, it was enough to start. It was on him to figure out where to go from there.


End file.
